- US officials said the air strikes happened on Thursday night, hours after the drone attack which US intelligence said was "of Iranian origin".
- US bases in north-east Syria have come under attack before, with the US responding with air strikes.
Image: AFP
The US has carried out air strikes against Iran-linked groups in eastern Syria after a drone attack killed a US contractor, the US defence chief said.
Fourteen pro-Iran fighters were killed, according to a monitoring group.
US officials said the air strikes happened on Thursday night, hours after the drone attack which US intelligence said was "of Iranian origin".
US bases in north-east Syria have come under attack before, with the US responding with air strikes.
Last August, the US bombed sites in eastern Syria which it said were linked to Iran's Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) - its most powerful armed force - after rocket attacks on US troops there.
Thursday night's air strikes were carried out on President Biden's orders "in response to... [the drone] attack as well as a series of recent attacks against coalition forces in Syria by groups affiliated with the IRGC", US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin said.
He said they had targeted "facilities used by groups affiliated with... [the] IRGC".
Speaking to BBC Newshour, Joel Rayburn, US Special Envoy to Syria under President Trump, said Iranian-sponsored attacks on US troops in eastern Syria began in 2017.
"It's usually drone strikes or rockets or mortars, against our bases. Most of the time they don't do any damage and they don't cause casualties.
"The defence secretary's point is that that's unacceptable and President Biden authorised a military response against the same kind of guys that carried that out on behalf of the Iranian regime."
The US defence department said the contractor had been killed, and five US service personnel and a second contractor wounded, when the drone struck a maintenance facility on a coalition base near Hasakah.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights - a UK-based monitoring group - said the US strikes killed six pro-Iran fighters in Deir al-Zour city, six in al-Bukamal, and two in the desert of al-Mayadeen.
Iran has not commented.
About 900 US troops are operating out of bases in southern and eastern Syria, without the permission of the Syrian government, as part of the US-led global coalition against the jihadist group Islamic State (IS).
They are tasked with preventing a resurgence of IS, whose militants once controlled large swathes of Syria before being defeated in 2019 following separate campaigns waged by US-backed Kurdish and Arab militia fighters and Iran- and Russia-backed pro-government forces.
The IRGC has built a substantial presence in Syria since the civil war began in 2011, sending hundreds of troops to advise President Bashar al-Assad's forces and to train and arm thousands of militiamen.